Information Grounds

The main purpose of this paper has been to discover how novice information management students perceive "their" information grounds, that is places/social settings in which people seek and share information while being involved in a focal activity. The ability to comprehend one's own information behavior, including the identification and interpretation of "encountered" or "visited" information grounds, serves as a basis for, inter alia, the development of one's information culture and literacy, which is particularly important for future information professionals/scientists. The reported research is empirical and exploratory in nature, based on a text analysis method. The sample included 67 first-year information management students of the Jagiellonian University in Cracow. The following outcomes have been confirmed: (1) students are generally able to identify different information grounds following Fisher's trichotomy of places, people, and ...

The main purpose of this paper has been to discover how novice information management students perceive "their" information grounds, that is places/social settings in which people seek and share information while being involved in a focal activity. The ability to comprehend one's own information behavior, including the identification and interpretation of "encountered" or "visited" information grounds, serves as a basis for, inter alia, the development of one's information culture and literacy, which is particularly important for future information professionals/scientists. The reported research is empirical and exploratory in nature, based on a text analysis method. The sample included 67 first-year information management students of the Jagiellonian University in Cracow. The following outcomes have been confirmed: (1) students are generally able to identify different information grounds following Fisher's trichotomy of places, people, and information-related phenomena; (2) the concept of information grounds seems to be a good starting point for teaching information behavior theories.

Higher education institutions are required to provide academic accommodations to students who need them. These services are typically available at campus disability centers, where disability counselors work with students to facilitate ac-commodations. Interviews were conducted to examine the health information behaviors of 17 disability counselors at two university disability centers by applying Fisher, Durrance, and Hinton's (2004) information grounds theory. Analysis of the interviews was performed to: 1) explore the information ground of the disability center, 2) better understand the ways in which health information is sought and used, and 3) consider the alternate ways in which health information is used by disability counselors. The perspectives of disability counselors' health information-seeking also point to ways in which information grounds theory can be applied to university staff who play a similar role in the lives of students at higher education institutions.